


A Kingdom Built on Sand

by Zygzy



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Despair, Freedom, Gen, Questioning, Revenge, Slavery, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 22:42:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10371387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zygzy/pseuds/Zygzy
Summary: The Whirlwind takes. The Witch-Queen takes. The ghouls take.Everything takes.The Fallen cannot take back. Dust is their mantle, damnation their crown.





	

In the wake of Skolas’ failure, when the Wolves turned on one another, tearing out throats for fear of losing their own, he lost his way. But before, he was a captain, feeble under the weight of his own bones while skin clung tight and paper-thin to what little there was left. Collared like many Wolves, fit only as the Witch-Queen’s lapdog and left to squabble over scraps that fell from her table. She pointed to her enemies, witches whispering in one ear and crows in the other, eddies of wyrd things twisting into a veil. He chased her bounties into the Dark, or cut them down, and when he went too far she tightened his chain and dragged him back beneath her heel. By her command, he killed. By her command, he would die.

Nozik, Eliksni captain; lower than a dreg.

Then Skolas returned.

From the Dark, beyond the Reef, he came. Impossible, but it was so, and the Wolves marveled in their bondage as he challenged the Witch-Queen. Rabid no longer, but Kell of Kells, hero from a time before the Whirlwind. He called, and the Wolves, ether-starved and howling, answered. The shock rifle once so heavy in his hands sang. It sang a glorious epic befitting the Eliksni that walked among the stars with heads held high and Great Machine at their back, lyrics penned with the blood of those who held his chains. It was a good song, and Nozik repeated it often with hand held tight around the shard of herealways strung from his neck.

The Witch-Queen was crippled as the Wolves at last broke their chains and slipped from their leashes, he among them giddy with the thrill of spilling unliving blood. The witches and warlocks could not hold them back, even wrapped in their wyrd things. Awoken fell, the abominable whisper of stars dashed against metal and stone as Wolves took their due.

The Witch-Queen, in time, took hers.

The Kell of Kells carried him towards the sun. They would take the City where Devils crawled beneath its walls; wild, mad, Eliksni painted red that gnawed on the bones of those who fell before. Kings watched from the shadows with envy in their hearts. They could not stomach a Kell greater than their own, and when Skolas called upon them they answered with knives, arc fire sputtering from the dark, so lost were they.

The Necropolis would not fall, not without the Devils and Kings in tow. Skolas had no time to entreaty nor, Nozik suspected, the intelligence. Instead, he turned to the Vault of Glass for answers, and there the Witch-Queen found him.

Ghouls carrying her banner followed from their dead City. They were her wolves now. There was no coil of wyrd things around them, no shadow of the Darkness about their shoulders, only the Light for a halo, but Nozik feared them just the same. Monsters that cannibalized the Great Machine, licked the Light from its wounds, there was no better description for such things. He feared Skolas’ lash, but the ghouls frightened him more.

No more than a handful, yet they surged forward as an endless tide. Cut one down, and the shimmer of Ghosts brought it back. There was no hope in fighting them. Dregs were their mortar and vandals their brick for a bridge that led straight to the Kell of Kells, and captains lit the way with futile arc fire.

He did not see the crows when they took Skolas, but he felt the brush of stardust slip beneath his armor. The Kell of Kells failed, and the Wolves broke. In the sweltering heat of Venus, Nozik rallied the few that were left. Some ghouls gave chase, and many Wolves were lost. When he found a skiff worthy of flight, there were barely enough to fill its seats. Fortunate, perhaps. They abandoned the hope borne by Skolas, and Nozik bristled with the shame of failure.  
  
Surviving ketches were scattering over Venus, fleeing from ghouls and the Witch-Queen’s wrath. Nozik and his crew joined one bound for Mars under the control of Kran, the Devourer. It was a dead world buried beneath oceans of dirt and dust, safe from ghouls who skirted its edges, and the Awoken that clung to the safety of their Reef. In the Cabal’s shadow, the Wolves would lick their wounds.


End file.
